You Can't Keep Safe What Wants to Break
by a.k.a.-ashley
Summary: And he loves her now as he angrily paces the length of his dressing room, hours away from pledging his love to another girl; trying to ignore the flood of doubt he can no longer keep at bay. LP. Pre-5x12


**you can't keep safe what wants to break**

* * *

He can't breathe.

The pressure in his chest, the hollow in his lungs, it's plagued him since Peyton came home and Lindsey found a ring that was never meant for her. It's worse now, unavoidable, and urgent as he slips into the tuxedo perfectly tailored to his lean frame.

_I love Lindsey. I love Lindsey. I love Lindsey_.

It starts as a simple mantra, an attempt to calm his nerves, but he can't ignore the way it starts to sound like persuasion. It's Lindsey's name that he speaks, but Peyton's that plays in his head.

He loved her at sixteen, all blonde curls and venom, towed cars and dusty motel rooms. He loved her at eighteen when he kissed her in a swirl of confetti and promised her that she was his one, and at nineteen when he proposed a future he was too young to give her and left her when she was smart enough to figure it out.

And he loves her now as he angrily paces the length of his dressing room, hours away from pledging his love to another girl; trying to ignore the flood of doubt he can no longer keep at bay.

_Mistake. Mistake. Mistake_.

The word taunts him in an angry whisper that sounds remarkably like his own voice.

His heart is beating fast, too fast, and he can hear it in his ears and he can feel it in his chest and pulsing in his temples. A gentle sheen of sweat forms on his brow and beneath his clothes, the moisture making his shirt cling to his skin and feel tight, restrictive, and he wants nothing more than to be free of it, of everything.

He sheds the heavy jacket of his tuxedo, and the silk tie that has begun to feel like a noose. The expensive garments land in a careless heap beneath his feet.

He needs to sit. To rest. To stop the spinning in his head. The black leather couch tucked into the corner seems too far away. He winds up on the floor instead, hands covering the flushed skin of his face, the hardwood floor cool beneath his back.

He tries to think of Lindsey. He pictures her in her white wedding gown, sitting by the window, her frame bathed in the soft glow of the late afternoon sun. He pictures her there, waiting for something that he can never give her.

He remembers the way he proposed to her. How his feelings of self-doubt and need for reassurance had awkwardly formed an invitation to marriage. And when she'd said yes, he remembers how fleeting his joy had felt.

Then he thinks of that other proposal, years ago, when his heart had pounded in his chest and his fingers fumbled with a ring box he'd spent the previous year saving for. It had felt like his greatest triumph as a writer, the way the words had flowed so delicately, so sure from his mouth to form a poem that only she could understand.

In that moment, before she'd said someday and he'd left her behind, he had never felt more alive, more in love, his life never more full of potential. And he realizes now that he's spent the last three years searching for that feeling, in other people, other things, when all along it's been wrapped up in her, in Peyton.

His hands fumble in his pockets until he finds what he's looking for. He stares at the simple gold band, twirling it delicately on the end of his finger, thinking of her still.

This is a mistake.

* * *

The walk to the bride's dressing room is hauntingly quiet. He feels small under the vaulted ceilings, and intricate archways. His hurried footsteps echo loudly in the narrow, empty hallways.

He knocks softly on the door and swings it open without waiting for an answer. She's alone in the room, looking exactly how he'd pictured her, sitting near the window with the sun catching on the delicate beading on her ivory gown, making it glitter and sparkle when she takes a deep breath.

He stands frozen in the doorway, hands shoved tightly in his pockets. He watches her smile fade as she takes in his solemn face, his slumped frame. She takes a deep breath, and he sees the beads glitter and sparkle.

She already knows.

* * *

There is urgency coursing through his veins as he leaves the church, a feeling of hope and assuredness that pumps heavy in his chest. He doesn't look back as he pulls away from the church, focusing instead on the cell phone in his palm, his thumb flicking through the list of contacts with only one name in mind.

She's screening her calls, or maybe just the ones from him. He doesn't leave a message.

The river court is empty, and there is a closed sign in the window of Clothes Over Bros. He tries her house, and when Brooke answers the door and takes in the sight of him in a tux, anger flashes across her made up face.

"She's not here Luke, and she's not going to the wedding, and I still can't believe that you had the nerve to send her an invitation."

He tells her the wedding's off before she can close the door in his face. She raises her eyebrows and her mouth forms the shape of genuine surprise.

"Try Tric."

* * *

The door to her office is open wide and she doesn't look up when the shuffle of his footsteps reach the doorway. She sits at her desk, her feet propped up high on a stack of papers, an open whiskey bottle and a half-empty glass within arms reach. Something slow plays on the record player, somber and aching, the perfect soundtrack to this day.

She takes a slow sip from the glass and shakes her head, the only acknowledgment of his presence.

"I've been driving all over town trying to find you."

She refuses to look at him.

"I can't do this Luke. I know we're friends, or trying to be friends, but I just can't be there today. I can't do it. Please, don't ask me to be there."

The sadness is evident in the gentle shake of her voice and the careful way she chooses her words.

"Peyton, there is no wedding."

She drops her feet from her desk, and looks over at him for the first time in days. The expression on her face is unreadable, and he doesn't know what to say to make any of this better. He doesn't know if anything can make this better for her.

"I was in my dressing room this morning, putting on my tux, and the entire time this was happening the only thing I could think about was you. And the truth is that you're all I've been thinking about for a long time."

"Which is why you proposed to someone else?"

"That day you came to see me in my office, when you said that your life snapped back into focus after we kissed, I knew exactly what that feeling was like. That's what I felt that day in Tric, when you told me that my art mattered. I felt whole again Peyton, and more in love with you than I had ever been before. And everything that has happened since that moment, the proposal, this wedding, it was all because I was too angry and too proud to admit what I've always known. That leaving you in that hotel room in L.A. was the biggest mistake of my life Peyton."

He closes the space between them, pulling her slowly from her chair, and touching his hands to gentle skin of her cheeks, flushed warm from the alcohol and the rapidly increasing beat of her heart.

"I told you the truth that night, when I said that none of my great days mattered without you, because they haven't. The books, the coaching, none of it has truly mattered without you to share it with. I love you Peyton, and I have been in love with you since I was sixteen years old, and no person, no single event in my life has ever changed that."

She stares at him while he makes his confession, her eyes refusing to betray the slightest emotion to the boy she loved who became the man who hurt her.

"I'm sorry." He says. "I'm sorry for everything that I've done, and for all the things I couldn't say."

She kisses him then, her lips slamming hard onto his, knocking them both slightly off-balance. Her arms wrap around his neck, pulling him closer. He hasn't felt like this in three years.

It's needy and urgent, the crashing of lips and tongue, the way his fingers tangle in her hair, the moan that escapes her when his body presses her against the edge of the desk.

When he leans her back towards the cluttered surface of her desk he feels resistance, her slender hands pressing against his chest. He pulls away. Her lips are red and swollen, and he watches her struggle to even out her breathing, as if the air has been pulled from her lungs. He stays close to her, wanting to touch her again, feeling her short ragged breaths on the tip of his chin and the length of his neck.

"Luke, I need some time." She fingers the collar of his dress shirt. "I mean Jesus, you're still in your tux. Can you please just give me some time to process all of this?" She says it slowly, not looking up at him, and he knows she's apprehensive because of him, because of what he did to her the last time she asked for time to think. He hates himself for what he has done to her.

And so he gives her what he couldn't before, time.

* * *

The first two days pass easily, he stays close to home, leaving only once while Lindsey packed the rest of her things into a box and left her key behind on the dresser. Days three and four pass slower, and he spends hours sitting on the porch, drinking cups of coffee and trying to focus on a novel while stealing glances at the street, hoping for just a glimpse of the Comet.

Lucas goes five days without seeing her face, without hearing her voice, and somehow it feels longer than the three years he'd spent without her.

He's lying in bed alternating between losing interest in a book and staring at the plaster patterns on his bedroom ceiling, when she walks through his door.

It's the second time he's felt it, that moment of clarity, when the struggles, the heartache, and the uncertainty fade away, leaving only them. He feels like he can see their future in that moment, wedding vows and blonde-haired babies, a whole lifetime's worth of memories that he could only ever see with her. It all makes his heart race.

He looks at her standing in the doorway and he wants to tell her all the things he's already said, that he loves her and that he's sorry, because if anyone deserves to hear it again and again it's her.

"Peyton." He says softly.

"I know." She whispers. She knows.

She kicks off her shoes near the foot of his bed and climbs in next to him. Her slight frame fits perfectly along the length of his torso, but she wraps her arm around his chest to pull him just a little closer.

He takes in the warmth of her body, the scent of her skin, the beat of her heart.

And finally, he can breathe.


End file.
